“I’m not pretending about finding you annoying,” he replied. “But let’s just put that on hold for now.” This wasn’t just a mistake—this was a huge mistake. A huge mistake for a number of reasons. But he wasn’t about to say as much to her out loud. She would undoubtedly go on and on about that if he did.
Finn sighed. “All right,” he agreed like a man who was resigned to his fate, “but before we go anywhere, I want to make certain things perfectly clear.”
Uh-oh, here it comes, Nik thought, bracing herself for another lecture. “Such as?”
“Such as that as long as you’re with me on this investigation, you’re going to play by my rules. If I tell you to do something, you won’t argue with me, you’ll just do it.”
His wording left something to be desired. “First, I don’t think there’s going to be any time for ‘playing,’ Cavanaugh. And as for the second part of that ‘commandment,’ people have gotten into trouble adhering to that.”
He frowned. “This isn’t the time for cracking jokes, either,” he informed her. “Now, if you’re not going to take this seriously—”
“Oh, I take my job very seriously, Detective. I always have.” She looked up into his eyes, a silent challenge in hers. “How about you?”
“I take everything seriously,” he informed her somberly.
“I can believe that,” she quipped. “You know,” she continued, “that just might be your problem.”
About to get into his vehicle, he looked at her sharply. “Are you actually analyzing me?” he demanded.
Her expression was innocence personified. “No, just trying to be helpful.”
Yeah, right, he thought. “Well, don’t,” Finn ordered.
Nik cocked her head, looking at him. “Message received. To the medical examiner’s?” she asked, waiting for him to confirm that that was their next destination.
But it was obvious that Finn had a different idea. “You said you were friends with Marilyn Palmer’s mother—or was that an exaggeration?”
“No, that wasn’t an exaggeration.” She could feel herself getting annoyed and banked down the feeling. He probably didn’t realize that he was accusing her of making things up.
Pressing her lips together, she studied him for a moment, trying to decide whether working with this man was going to be a mistake. Well, she was here, so she might as well see where this led. But she did want to get something out in the open. “You don’t play well with others, do you?”
His expression darkened again. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Well, you really don’t know me, but you just accused me of making things up to further what you assume is my agenda.” She waited for him to deny it—or to have an epiphany, if that was possible.
His darkened expression only lightened by a fraction. “Sorry if I insulted you,” he said sarcastically.
Finn wasn’t prepared for the smile that came over her face—it seemed to light up the whole immediate area, even though the sun had already risen.
“Okay,” she said brightly. “Apology accepted,” Nik told him.
He scowled at her. He didn’t like having her think he was apologizing for anything. “I take it you’re not acquainted with sarcasm.”
“Oh, I’m acquainted with it,” she assured him. “I was just hoping that your lack of social skills made what you meant as an apology sound as if you were being sarcastic.” She grew serious. “I think that if you stop thinking of me as someone interfering in your investigation and start thinking of me as an asset to utilize, we stand a chance of getting along a whole lot better.”
Finn chose not to reply to that. Instead, he told himself that the sooner he and the others working with him on this case could pull all the stray pieces together, the sooner he could be rid of this irritating woman.
At least he could hope.
“Do you think that Marilyn Palmer’s mother will be up yet?” he asked Nik.
“Oh, I know that she is,” Nik assured him. When he raised his eyebrow, appearing doubtful because of the hour, she explained. “She hasn’t really slept since Marilyn didn’t come home the other night.”
That wasn’t all that unusual, he thought. Nodding, he suggested, “Why don’t you lead the way?” And then he added, “Slower, this time,” he added.
“I didn’t speed,” she told him, throwing a grin over her shoulder. “I was just anxious to see you and, like I said, it turned out that all the lights were in my favor.”
There was laughter in her eyes, most likely at his expense, Finn thought. Ordinarily, he would have taken offense that she was laughing at him, but for some reason, he didn’t.
“Yeah, right,” he muttered. “Let’s get going,” he ordered, waving a hand at her car.
“I’ll go slow so you don’t lose me,” Nik said, remembering his instruction with a smile as she pulled open her driver’s-side door.
“I should be so lucky,” Finn murmured under his breath.
“I heard that, Detective,” Nik responded with a laugh.
“Just go. Don’t worry about losing me.” Even if she did, he had the address to the Palmer house.
Finn got into his vehicle. Again, he told himself that he really needed to have his head examined for having called this woman. Still, he supposed that there was an outside chance that this woman that Nik Kowalski was initially looking for was involved in not just Seamus Cavanaugh’s carjacking, but in the murder of the woman who had been found in the Dumpster as well.
In any event, he wanted to interview Marilyn Palmer’s mother and he had a feeling that taking this annoying blonde chatterbox with him to run interference might make things a little easier. She was right about one thing, he grudgingly acknowledged. He wasn’t as good as some of his cousins and siblings when it came to questioning people and getting them to trust him.
Finn started up his vehicle, pulled up directly behind her and they departed.
It didn’t take him long to realize that if this woman was driving any slower, she could have been accused of actually going backward.
He trailed behind the woman ahead of him for approximately three city blocks. Then, having had enough of this charade, he sped up and passed her.
Which was when she did the same thing.
Finn suppressed the urge to speed up again. He wasn’t usually competitive, but there was something about this woman with the laughing eyes that certainly had a way of pressing all his buttons, he thought.
This, too, shall pass, he promised himself.
Maybe it would, he thought, but definitely not soon enough for him.
* * *
They wound up reaching Kim Palmer’s house faster than he had intended. The modest one-story house had all the lights on despite the fact that it was now a little after seven in the morning. There was no need for so many lights to be on—unless they had been deliberately left on overnight to act as a beacon for her missing daughter.
“What was that all about?” Finn asked, getting out of his car at the same time that Nik emerged from hers.
She looked at him as if she didn’t know what he was talking about, her eyes wide.
“You started out going slow, but you sped up,” he told her.
“Oh, that,” she responded.
“Yes, ‘that,’” he repeated, waiting for her to explain.
“I was just helping you get the lead out,” she answered him amicably.
“Maybe I didn’t want to get any lead out,” he pointed out.
Her grin told him she thought otherwise. “Sure you did,” Nik said.
He was about to respond when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the front door of the Palmer house opening before either one of them had a chance to reach it or ring the doorbell.
Nik saw the change in his expression and followed his gaze. Seeing what he was looking at, she
instantly turned her attention to the ashen-faced woman framed in the doorway.
Kim Palmer, a once-attractive-looking woman, looked as if she had aged a decade in the last few days. She was holding on to the doorway on either side for support as she appeared to be struggling to keep her knees from buckling beneath her.
Her breathing became labored, as if she was trying to get her heart under control.
“Oh, lord, you found her, didn’t you, Nik? You found my baby and she’s dead, isn’t she?” Covering her mouth, Kim Palmer instantly began weeping. And then her knees gave way.
Finn reached the woman just in time to catch her and keep her from hitting the front step a second after she fainted.
Chapter 6
“Bring her inside,” Nik instructed, quickly taking charge of the situation. “The sofa’s right over here.” She pointed it out as she led the way over to a light gray, faded sectional.
As Finn followed her, Nik grabbed one of the two bright blue-and-white throw pillows. She placed it so that it would be just under the unconscious woman’s head as he put her down.
Finn was careful not to jolt the older woman as he set her on the sofa. Focused on Marilyn’s mother, he didn’t realize that Nik was leaving the room until she was almost out.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To the kitchen—” she pointed where she was headed “—to get a wet towel for her forehead. Hopefully, that’ll make her come around.”
“Oh.” He thought the insurance investigator was ducking out, leaving him to deal with the unconscious woman while she did who knew what. It hadn’t occurred to him to get Mrs. Palmer a compress. Fainting women weren’t exactly his forte. Nodding, he gave his consent. “Go ahead,” he urged Nik.
He didn’t hear what she said as she left the room. Maybe it was better that way, he thought.
Taking Mrs. Palmer’s hand, he pressed his thumb against her pulse and found that it was strong. Well, at least she hadn’t suffered a stroke or a heart attack. The worn-out, haggard-looking woman was under a lot of stress, and he was afraid that it could have generated the worst sort of disabling reaction.
“Got it,” Nik declared, her voice coming from the kitchen.
The next moment, she returned carrying a totally wet, almost dripping towel. As she approached, Finn stepped back out of her way. Kneeling next to the unconscious woman, Nik ran the towel along Kim Palmer’s throat and face, then folded it so that she could place the towel on her forehead.
“C’mon, Kim, you need to wake up. Open you eyes for me, Kim.” When she repeated the entreaty a second time, the pale woman’s lashes fluttered, then her eyes finally opened.
The next minute Kim Palmer suddenly gasped and bolted upright, looking wildly at Nik.
Kim grabbed her arms, as if anchoring Nik in place somehow helped.
“Is she—is she—?” Although Kim was obviously trying to ask a question, she couldn’t get herself to do it. The words burned on her tongue and refused to come out.
Nik came to her rescue. “No,” she told the frightened woman. “Marilyn’s not dead.”
“At least not that we know of,” Finn qualified.
Stunned by the addition, Nik instantly shot him a dirty look.
“What?” he asked. He had no clue what he had said or done wrong.
Nik did her best to redirect Kim’s attention to another part of the investigation. “Marilyn’s partial fingerprint was found at the scene of a carjacking,” she told her.
“A carjacking?” Kim repeated as if she didn’t comprehend the word. And then her features clouded over. “I knew it! I knew he’d get her in trouble. I told her to stop sneaking off and seeing this mystery man of hers.” Clutching Nik’s hand again, the older woman looked at her, totally at a loss as she pleaded for help. “Why wouldn’t she listen to me?”
That was easy enough to answer, although she knew it was painful for Kim to hear. “Because girls that age don’t listen to their mothers. They think they know better and that their mothers are far too old to understand what it means to be in love with someone.”
Kim Palmer looked like a woman who had been beaten down by life. Distressed, her eyes went from one person to another.
“So what do I do?” Kim asked, totally at a loss as to how to handle this news and, more importantly, how to get her daughter back. “How can I deal with this? How can I fix this?”
“You pray, and when she turns up, you hold her and tell her that you’ll be there for her no matter what,” Nik told the woman with such feeling, she had Finn believing her. Or at least believing that she believed what she was saying.
“No matter what?” Kim repeated numbly, almost wide-eyed.
“No matter what—but that doesn’t mean that you condone whatever it is that Marilyn and this man might have done if what they’ve done is something wrong,” she explained.
Out of the corner of her eye, Nik caught the detective watching her. She had to admit she was surprised that he hadn’t tried to interject his own philosophy into what she was saying to Kim, or to at least correct her. Was he biding his time so he could come down hard on her when they left—if not before—or was there some sort of other motive going on here that she was missing?
Nik realized that she couldn’t second-guess the detective, but right now there were more important things on her mind.
“Now, this is very important, Kim,” she said to the woman, speaking slowly as she sat down on a corner of the sectional next to her. “I want you to think. Do you know the name of the guy Marilyn’s been hanging around with?” Nik asked.
“It’s Charles, or Chandler, or maybe Chad.” Kim raised her wide shoulders and then dropped them again helplessly. “I don’t know. She never brought him around to introduce to me. He was like this special little secret of hers. I only overheard her talking to him on her cell a couple of times, making plans to get together. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have even known he existed.”
“So, no last name?” Finn asked.
He had been silent up until now, so when he asked his question, the sound of his voice caught both women by surprise, startling them, although for totally different reasons.
“None that I heard, no,” Marilyn’s mother answered, shaking her head. “Do you think she’s in danger?” She directed her question to Finn.
Nik turned her head and gave him a silent warning look not to say anything. She didn’t want Marilyn’s mother to become any more upset than she already was. But, to be honest, she had no idea if Finn even understood what she was attempting to get across to him—or if he would have even listened if she had gotten through to him.
Nik just mentally crossed her fingers.
“I think the faster we can find her, the better off she’s going to be,” Finn told the older woman. It was the best he could offer the woman.
“By any chance, you wouldn’t have any photos of Marilyn and this guy, would you?” She knew the woman had said she barely knew of his existence, but it was worth a try. “When I was Marilyn’s age, my father kept snapping pictures all the time, claimed it was his hobby, but I think he was just trying to capture pictures of my boyfriends and my sister’s boyfriends in case one of them did something he didn’t approve of.” She smiled fondly, remembering how, at the time, she and her sister felt as if he was barging into their life. “I think he figured he could get his buddies to back him up if he ever decided one of those guys act was acting disrespectfully toward us.”
If possible, Kim looked even sadder than she’d already appeared. “It would have been a lot easier for all of us if Marilyn’s father had stuck around, but...” Her voice trailed off as she shrugged her shoulders helplessly. “He didn’t.”
“So, no pictures?” Nik asked.
“I told you, I never even saw what he looked like,” Kim answered, frustrated by her own helplessness.
&nb
sp; “Is there anything else that you can remember?” Finn asked. “Anything this guy might have done or said that your daughter might have repeated?” He thought of something. “Did your daughter mention a favorite hangout place that she liked to go to with him, or anything of that nature?”
To each question, the woman just shook her head. “My mind’s a blank,” she admitted, tears filling her brown eyes.
Finn merely nodded. “That’s all right. Maybe it’ll come back to you. If you do think of anything, give me a call,” he said, handing the woman one of his cards.
She glanced at it, but it was obvious that she wasn’t making out any of the letters at the moment. “I have Nik’s number,” she told him.
“You can call either one of us,” Nik told her. “Detective Cavanaugh is with the Aurora Police Department, but I’m not.”
The information clearly was news to Kim. “Oh, I just assumed he was a friend of yours and not...” For a second, the woman’s voice trailed off. Kim paused to take in a breath, as if that could somehow help her focus. “She really is in trouble, isn’t she?”
Finn was about to answer her, but Nik spoke up first, raising her voice to drown him out just in case he was going to talk over her and say something that would upset Kim all over again.
“Let’s not assume anything just yet, not until we have more of the facts.” Nik looked a little more closely at the haunted woman. She really was in a bad way, Nik thought. “Is there anyone we can call to come stay with you? A relative maybe, or a friend?” she asked. “You really shouldn’t be alone right now.”
Kim nodded. “I can call my sister,” she said, as if the thought had suddenly occurred to her.
“Do you want us to stay until she gets here?” Nik asked. “Or at least one of us?” she amended. The detective was probably not in any mood to stick around and hold Kim’s hand, Nik thought, and it might be better if he just left.
But Kim shook her head, turning down the offer. “No, that’s all right. Claire doesn’t live that far away from me. I’ll be all right,” she assured the two people in her living room. “Really,” she added when they didn’t immediately get to their feet.
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